Irish Sport Social Report for February

Twenty Irish sporting bodies now reach 3.6 million people across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. They produce on average 7.85 pieces of content per day, use hashtags in 46% of their social posts and have an average engagement rate of 0.12%.

The top channel is Instagram with an average engagement of 1.91% while Facebook and Twitter delivers .21% and .015 on average.

Looking back at February, Irish Rugby, GAA, Horse sport Ireland, Basketball Ireland were the dominant bodies with the 6 Nations, Allianz League, show jumping Grand Prix’s and National League providing the entertainment.

The GAA produced an impressive 1.06k posts during the month, 50 times more than what Gymnastic Ireland produced.

The two figures we like to look at in Sportego are growth per month, engagement rates and amplification.

Amplification is retweets and Facebook shares which empowers you to reach new audiences. In that regard, Irish Rugby stood tall with 30.7k cross-channel amplifications, 70% of which came on Facebook. That was 3 times more than the GAA, despite 40% less content. The old adage of quantity over quality.

Engagement wise, the numbers for Irish Rugby were in the bottom quadrant, mainly due to their size; a 1.3m audience. Topping this table is Gymnastic Ireland, the fourth such month where they have dominated. This is due to their content really resonating with their audience.

Gymnastic Ireland had 1.07k engagements off 50 posts while Swim Ireland for example had 4.6k engagements off 125 posts with an audience 8k bigger. Gymnastic Ireland grew their audience by 5.5% during the month, the biggest of the NGBs.

Sport Ireland experienced the next biggest growth at 2.15% while Irish Rugby, Cricket Ireland and GAA, the top 3 of Irish sport, all achieved growth in excess of 1%.

Hashtag wise, #jobfairy used by 5 different bodies was the most popular with #Dublin (used by Basketball Ireland, Sport Ireland and Go Racing) generating the highest engagement per post.

Finally, looking at Irish sport and their influencers on twitter. Irish Rugby had potential eyeballs of 141M, showing their incredible reach. The FAI had 9M eyeballs while the GAA had 5M.

Radio Presenter Dermot O’Leary, of Big Brother, Scottish actor Sam Heughan and Once upon a time star Colin O’Donoghue all tweeted about Irish Rugby with a combined likes of 5k while the President of Ireland, Michael D Higgins and Brian O’Driscoll also got in on the act.